Week 6: The Biobusiness Revolution Part 1: Healthcare and Biomedical Sciences

What is a biobusiness? Any commercial activity based on an understanding of life science and life science processes is known as a biobusiness. We looked into what constituted the biobusinesses, its surprisingly huge size and the revolutions that currently being undergone. We looked at the environment in which our healthcare and biomedical industries are currently in, such as our changing demographics and gene mapping technology.

Key Takeaways

For an industry to change, the circumstances have to be such as to warrant such a change. Could it be that the industry itself is facing a changing environment? Is there someone within the industry that believes that something can be done better? Based on what was discussed in the class, one of the factors I believe is a main cause for the biobusiness revolution is that the demographics of people these days has changed.

People these days have different needs from last time. Previously, more of us died from communicable diseases such as the cough and flu. Now, more and more people are dying from chronic illnesses such as osteoporosis, diabetes and heart complications. The medical industry has done an amazing job with curbing communicable diseases but now we’ll have to look more at the consequences of our changing lifestyles. There are now more biobusinesses focused on wellness rather than simply treating the symptoms of the disease. In the case of most chronic illnesses, the moment you start seeing dire symptoms, it may be already too late.

Another factor I can see influencing the biobusiness revolution is the mapping of the human genome. The mapping of the human genome has opened up a world of opportunites when it comes to the manufacturing and efficacy of drugs. We can now kiss goodbye suffering from certain side-effects when taking drugs. With our genes mapped, the doctors can now prescribe drugs catered personally to each and every one of us ensuring greater effect and lower-to-no sideeffects (hopefully). Soon we may come to a time when doctors prescribe us medication for diseases that we haven’t even contracted yet!

The last factor that I’ll be writing about here is the advancements of technology. Virtual reality gaming can be used to train surgeons now. Boosts in confidence with no risk of killing someone? Check. Advancements in prosthetics making the once disabled whole again? Check. Powered Exo-skeletons enhancing the physical capabilities of human beings? Check. I think it’s quite fitting to place John Naisbitts quote here:

“The most exciting breakthroughs of the 21st century will not occur because of technology but because of an expanding concept of what it means to be human”

Now that technology has evolved so much, a lot of these breakthroughs in biotechnology are really just the tip of the iceberg. I can’t predict what will be coming out next in the medical arena but rest assured, more and more exciting things are coming our way!

Ratings for the class:

In my first post, I stated that class times seem to zip by really quickly. That would be an understatement compared to how fast time flied in this class. Captivating information (and worrying about what to say next for class-participation) along with the growing interactivity found within the class make for a fast-paced and pleasant experience. I give this class a 9/10.

Week 5: ICT Past, Present and Future

Brief Overview:

This week’s class focused on Information, Communication and Technology: Past, Present and Future. It’s always good to start from the beginning. Communication’s most basic form was word of mouth. Then came longer range communication such as smoke signals, books, radio and soon television. There was one problem though, all these forms of communication made the ones receiving the info passive recipients. The first form of the internet began that way too, until we reached Web 2.0. Today’s internet depends a lot on user created content: Facebook, Youtube and Twitter all would be ghost towns with nothing to offer if no users posted anything there. Web 2.0 is the era of 2-way communication where users not only receive information and content but create it as well. Our lesson also touched on the various aspects of ICT today such as: social networking, crowdsourcing, gaming, wireless technology, information systems, cloud computing and knowledge management.

Interesting Observations:

The Present:

The Millenium Development Goals were established in the year 2000 at the Millenium Summit of the United Nations. That meeting saw the participants of UN agreeing to meet the MDGs by the year 2015. How has ICT helped reach the MDGs? One of the MDGs is alleviating poverty and the rise in telephone usage around the world has linked the poor farmer with access to info he never dreamt could have! With mobile phones, poor farmers can find out the market price of his goods, gain access to weather reports and also communicate easier with other farmers or contacts downstream. Our man can now find better ways of farming from his peers and never be shortchanged by middlemen again!

Advancements of ICT has altered the way think about development. The same example of mobile telephony applies. Bangladesh overcame the obstacles of expensive fixed-line telecommunications infrastructure by expanding its mobile phone networks industry. We can kiss the long-winded processes of building towers for telephone cables goodbye. (Their fixed-line teledensity was only at 1%)

Bangladesh’s mobile market passed 100 million subscribers in early 2013 as penetration reached 67% - Source here

                

The Future:

During the session, we were discussing the integration of all the devices we currently have. Web 3.0 would be an era not only of vast amounts of human-to-human interaction but one with just as much device-to-device communication. Companies’ services would actively collect data on the consumers’ preferences and likes based on the information posted on social networks and plot out the people’s itineraries. If person A likes laksa, the next time person A is on the road, his device would “recommend”  a popular laksa joint to him. We can just imagine the possibilities where the devices help us to keep track of almost everything we do and all we need to do sit back and enjoy.

This is not without its drawbacks though. By allowing our devices to have this much interactivity and become almost interdependent on each other, we are putting all of our eggs in one basket. There will always be hackers lurking around the corner. Almost all of our devices: from our phones, cars, washing machines and refrigerators would contain data about us at that time. Should any of our devices get compromised, the hacker would have access to all our personal data and identities. The hacker now has a greater choice of targets to choose from. Unless all the hackers suddenly decide to turn over a new leaf, all of us, companies included, would have to ramp up security and hope for the best.

              

Key Takeaways

              ICT has come a long way. From being tools simply to help mankind and get his message across, one of ICT’s greatest achievements is creating a platform for the greatest amount of information sharing and social interaction. The world is shrinking as there are now fewer strangers in the world. Social networking allows us to meet friends through friends almost seamlessly. Need a question answered? With crowdsourcing anyone around the world can help you. The world is moving to one with no boundaries where potentially, anyone can connect with everyone no matter where he or she is.

               ICT is growing so fast, services that we never thought we need have surfaced. Dropbox, a form of cloud computing, allows users to access their files and folders from any device they have sol long as they saved in Dropbox’s cloud folder. Knowledge management services exist because the amount of data on the internet is so vast that it would be impossible to sift through it all to find exactly what you’re looking for without some difficulty. As with everything, ever changing circumstances bring ever new challenges. New challenges always mean new opportunities.

Ratings for the class:

The content of the class was engaging and interesting (this might a bit biased). Time was managed quite well and the presentations from the other students were pretty good. This class gets 8/10.

Week 4: Drivers of World Change and Change Leadership and Management

TWC Group 22 Session 4 Blogpost

Brief Overview:

First half: Drivers of World Change

The prof began the class with a statement that if everyone in the world consumed energy like the average Singaporean and American, the world’s energy reserves would be depleted in 9 years. The point was proven that the finger-pointing blame game when it comes to cleaning up our acts has to end. We then moved into the various drivers of world change including globalization, technology, innovations, environmental drivers, changing tastes and competition. Drivers of change exist if the conditions in which we carry out our activities are changed. We also spoke revolutionary and evolutionary change, one being radical while the other one gradual.

Second half: Change Management and Change Leadership

Now that we know that these types of changes exist, how do manage it? Can we lead change? These two concepts were discussed in the second half of class. We first defined what the difference between management and leadership is. Leaders lead the people, managers organize and execute. How would people respond to changing realities? Prof introduced us to the traditional freeze-unfreeze-refreeze model of change and its modern counterpart, the continuous monitoring and renewal model. The old model worked better before changes took place at the pace we are so used to today. Now that change has accelerated, everyone’s got to be ready to change at the drop of a hat, thus the continuous change model.

Interesting Observations/ Key Takeaway points:

What I’ve noticed when reviewing our materials for this session is that drivers for world change rarely ever work alone. Just as with everything else, the drivers are all simply different factors that affect the direction we are going to take with change. When we were discussing the various types of drivers in class such as competition and technological advancements, it is safe to say that these two function in a vicious cycle. Companies and countries all need to stay ahead of the competition. One of the ways is through technological advancement. As one entity blazes ahead in the tech race, the other companies strive to keep up. The drivers of world change are practically interlinked in this example.

Managing change and leading change. The key to understanding these separate concepts is first to understand what management and leadership means. To put in analogical terms, the leader is the commander of the army. He oversees the long terms strategies involved to ultimately win the war. He is the man in charge of making all the big decisions and shapes the direction his army will follow. Managers are quite like the platoon and squad leaders found within the army. They will receive orders from higher up and would take steps to organize the troops, train them and carry out the objectives laid down by the generals to ensure that the commander’s strategy ultimately succeeds. To lead is to determine the direction and choices the organization is going to take. To manage is to take steps to achieve the goals set out by the leaders.

From what I gained through the readings and the videos that the professor showed in class, the key to leadership in any matter is to inspire people to join you. How do we inspire people to work? If the people are expected to simply follow orders, they end up feeling like cogs in a machine, unappreciated. Once you make them feel part of the decision making process, they feel a sense of responsibility to get the work done (once incentives are thrown in along with the responsibility, trust me on this one) and they work with the management to get the work done. Communication between the leaders or managers and the staff is also vital when it comes to getting anything, including change, done. In the Lone Nut Dancing video, it is safe to conclude that the first follower of the (formerly) lone dancer would not have stayed had the dancer not appreciated him and treated him as an equal. That’s a lesson right there. Look down on others and others won’t look at you again. As for the video about the little Indian boy leading the push to get the tree off the road, he led by example. Through his actions, he gave out the message along the lines of “I’m going to make the change.” He didn’t really bother whether he received help or not, his sheer determination to make a change made others in the video realize that while they were all just sitting around complaining all of them who were in a better position to help refused to do anything. I call this leadership by shame.

Discussion topics:

This response that I am posting here will be posted on Facebook as well.

In Eric Sim’s presentation, he posed the question: “How have the values of people changed from one generation to another with advent of greater connectivity? (ie, our parents and us.)

My response to this would be that the values of people in our generation have changed greatly from the values practiced during our parent’s generation. Please let me know if I missed anything out as most of my examples would be from personal observation.

The lives of our generation can be considered a lot less personal compared to our parents’ generation. If we find anything, no matter how minute such as “look what I am having for lunch” we would not hesitate to take a picture of it, edit it on Instagram if need be, and post it on social networking sites such as Facebook.  Our parents’ generation can be considered more reserved in that aspect that they don’t go about telling their entire circle of friends about most of the things we post of Facebook.

Trolls are people who like to stir up trouble by using shock value in their comments. I’m quite certain that some of these black sheep exist during our parent’s generation but back then there was no social media. Now that platforms such as Facebook and Twitter exist, these people can hide behind pseudonyms and safety of anonymity and carry out the hatemongering on even greater scales. One example in this link (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kFNYuteAjA) posts comments such as “rot in piss” on people’s memorial pages on Facebook. When he’s confronted during the video, he justifies his comments by saying that he’s within his rights and that Facebook is an open platform for people to voice their opinions. The availability of anonymity sometimes brings out the worst in some of us. The same applies to the rest of us. As we sit behind the safety of our computers, we don’t receive the body language and tone cues from the people we converse with online. With this we become more vocal and say things we tend not to say in real life.

Finally, our generation is far more reactive to scandals. We human beings tend to react with emotion to certain events and won’t hesitate to comment and share things we deem should be public knowledge. Social media gives its users access to sources of information that people deem important and can spread viral information like wildfire. http://www.tealeafnation.com/2013/05/yet-another-food-safety-scandal-in-china-now-rat-meat-masquerades-as-lamb/ This link is regarding fox, mink and rat meat being sold as lamb meat in Shanghai. Most users reacted in disgust and outrage while others have posted methods they believe can help them identify the real meat. During our parents’ generation when no social media existed, these events could only travel via the news or by word of mouth/ telephone. Clearly there is a marked difference in the reaction time of the 2 generations.

Our generation shows a little less restraint in comments, share a lot more personal infor than our parents will ever do and receive and react to scandalous news a lot faster than our parents’ generation.

TWC Paper Outline

Nuclear Power and Nuclear Bombs: Effects on the Past and Future Implications

Executive Summary

This paper seeks to review the past effects of nuclear energy and nuclear bombs on world development on an economic and political way and their implications for the future. The paper looks back on the positive and negative turns humanity has taken involving the use of this technology.

Why I chose this topic:

One persisting problem the world is currently facing is the Fukushima nuclear power plant meltdown following an earthquake that happened there in 2011. This is a good example of both the good and dark sides of nuclear technology. Thinking through this some more, I realized that nuclear power is more than just in powering up our cities, it is the basis of some of the world’s greatest political trump cards: nuclear weapons. Working on this paper will us a greater understanding on how nuclear power was used to shape the world we know today.

Background

Nuclear power plants supply about 17% of the world’s power.

Development of Nuclear Energy - Radiation was discovered 1795 and discoveries that led up to 1939 discovery by Lise Meitner and her nephew Otto Frisch that showed the energy release to be about 200 million electron volts. Frisch then confirmed this figure experimentally in January 1939.

During World War II development shifted towards nuclear bombs.

Effects on the past

·        Nuclear Weapons

The Advent of Nuclear Weapons

-World War 2 and Cold War (Nuclear Arms Race) and their political implications

-Nuclear powered submarines (perhaps)

Brief look at effect on international Law

·        Uses outside warfare

Samples of products created using radioactive substances

Using Nuclear energy to power cities – President Eisenhower’s “Atoms for Peace Program 1953”

Three Mile Island Disaster – slowed down the brakes on the Nuclear industry in 1970’s

Chernobyl Disaster 1986 and similar cases – health and environmental effects elaboration

Effects in Today’s Societies and Why We Are Keeping It

·        Outside politics and why they keep using nuclear power

Nuclear power continues to contribute quite significantly to global energy supply

Disarming nuclear (some) nuclear warheads for domestic use

Nuclear energy does not contribute to carbon emissions during the energy creation process and other reasons why it is considered better than fossil fuels

Other economic benefits of nuclear energy (domestic industry in those that can afford it, no need to rely on global commodity prices, etc)

Looking towards nuclear fusion

Some nuclear spills still happen. It’s only safe if properly contained.

·        Politics and warfare

Nuclear bombs still continue to play a big role in politics- North Korea

India and China are also big on the nuclear game. If Iran’s nuclear program is supposedly domestic, why don’t they let anyone take a look?

Future Implications

·        Societal

Could we be seeing a decline in the nuclear industry? The US is showing signs of a slowing nuclear power industry.

Storing nuclear waste is still a problem. Could we actually manage to turn nuclear waste into fuel?

Is Nuclear Fusion really the way of the future?

·        Political

Would we be seeing countries still resorting to using nukes for international clout? Seems likely.

With the Africa’s recent rise in economic status, could we be seeing another nuclear super power in the making?

Conclusion

Nuclear energy is going to continue to play a big role in our lives. Nuclear energy will still fuel part of the world but people are slowly moving towards other alternative energy sources. Nukes will still be part of certain international negotiations and reactions.

Bibliography

To be included

Week 3: Sustainability and Innovation

This week’s topics were Technology and Industrial Development: Moving Towards Sustainable Development and Technology and Innovation Management. In the first half we discussed how there is a need for “cyclical models of production” based on sustainability and the policies in place attempting to shift society towards sustainability. The second half saw us talking mostly about how products are made: from the conception of an idea to placing it on the store shelves.

Interesting Observations:

In the first half, prof showed us a video called the Story of Stuff. It’s a video that takes an in-depth look into our linear system of production. Why linear? Because linear means that it only goes in one direction; from extracting the earth’s resources to dumping the used stuff into landfills never to be seen again.

When I got back, I took a look at the whole video and these are things I gathered from it is that the whole process is engineered.

The idea behind this grand scheme of perceived and planned obsolescence turns all the hardworking citizens into consumers. There is a vicious cycle here as consumers are tricked into believing whatever they currently have is inadequate and buy more stuff just for the media and society to shame them into buying more of the latest products. Planned obsolescence is done in such a way that people are forced to buy newer models even if their current model is still in perfect working condition. For instance in technology, most of the new upgrades come out so fast, the moment one decides to buy a new computer, a new model is released. It’s an insane cycle that turns the average person’s life into an endless trip between the workplace and the shopping centre.

Have we all been victims of a clever scheme to enrich others at the expense of others? That much seems clear. Thankfully there are at least some companies that show some signs of going in the right direction.

Prashant presented to us H&M’s measures to become more sustainable. Among them were efforts to decrease water consumption when making clothes and being more transparent when it comes to workers in the production lines. However, we need to bear in mind that H&M is a fast-fashion business model clothes company. While it is good that they are taking steps to conserve natural resources, would they be able to reflect the price of all these changes in their price tags? These measures internalize a lot of costs and consumers might have to pay more. Would their customers be able to make the shift in their spending habits? All of us have to change if the world is at stake.

Responses to Presentation Discussion Questions:

•        Should Consumers demand for or should the Government regulate the level of transparency disclosed by Businesses?

In my opinion, both have an equal part to play when it comes to business transparency. Consumers are the people who fund the businesses by purchasing their goods. The Government is the body that should have the people’s interests at heart and Business transparency should be something the people should know.

The people have to be aware of every step of the development process as to be able to make an informed decision on the qualities of a product. If businesses sneak harmful toxins into the product, would they let us know? No! If their business practices are unethical would they let us know? No! The people have to take charge of the things that we buy as at the end of the day it’s our money we’re paying them. We are not going to fork over our cash to unethical people masquerading around as if they have our interests at heart are we?

The government collects taxes from firms. Why does the government collect taxes? Because the government is (supposed) to use the money to benefit the citizens of its country. The government has the power through legislation to impose regulations on companies to make them more transparent. The people’s protests (or threats to move to another company) will not work for all companies. The government must step in for the interests of everyone involved.

Rating for class:

The class went smoother than previous rounds (even though the prof was late) as we’re all getting more into the swing of things. It’s good that the prof reminded us to take the discussions to Facebook. We’re seeing a lot more action there now. I’ll give this class an 8 out of 10.